Self-Cultivation in Asian Medicine, Part VII (201))

by Hyoun Bae on 01/12/19

Self-Cultivation

The sage healers of ancient times
were able to heal the heart of humanity, and thus prevent disease from arising.
Today’s doctors only know how to treat disease when it has already manifested
in physical form, and don’t know anymore how to work with the heart. This
situation can be compared to the process of pruning tree branches while
neglecting the tap root, or to working downstream without awareness of the
properties of the wellspring. Is this not an ignorant way to go about the
business of medicine? If you wish to bring about real healing, you must first
and foremost treat a person’s heart. You must bring the heart on the right
path, so that it can be filled and sustained by a universal sense of truth. You
must get it to a place where it can safely abandon all doubting and worrying
and obsessing in senselessly looping patterns, where it can let go of any
anxiety provoking imbalances, and where it is willing to surrender all “me, me,
me” and all “this is his/her fault!” Try and awaken the heart to acknowledge
and regret all the wrong that one has done, to lay down all selfish
attachments, and to transform one’s small and self-centered world for the
glorious universe wherein we are all one, and wherein there is nothing to do
but praise its existence. This is the master method of the enlightened
physician–healing through the heart. Or, in different words from the ancient
record: the enlightened doctor intervenes before physical disease manifests,
while the average physician springs into action only after disease has become
apparent. To treat before this stage, this is the terrain of healing the
core—the heart; to treat afterwards, this is the realm of dietary therapy,
herbal therapy, acupuncture, and moxibustion. Although there are these two
types of therapeutic paths, there is really only one core law of healing: All
disease comes from the heart.

The
heart of Chinese medical practice lies is in the transformation of suffering.
Self-cultivation is acknowledged as the means by which one can enter into the
root of disease, which paradoxically, is also wellspring of health. One of the
earliest dialectics forming therapeutic intervention is known as root and
branch determination, or ben and biao respectively. The Korean physician
Hur Jun plays on the metaphor of the heart as the root of suffering, and by
treating at the level of the heart, or addressing any limited sense of self,
one can eradicate disease at its source, and engage a process of “core
healing.”

The
extent to which self-cultivation serves a role in the cultivation of medical
knowledge and skill in medical arts depends upon each practitioner’s
disposition or proclivity. The role and parameters upon which personal
development can be measured is subject to personal validation, yet that themes
of self-cultivation have a long precedence in medical discipline is
unquestionable.

The
philosophical origins of Chinese medical tradition include Daoist and
pre-Buddhist influences, yet through the ages Buddhist, Confucian and
Neo-confucian values came to shape the orientation of practitioners in
individual approaches to self-cultivation. Historically, many of the scholar
physicians of whom Scheid offers biographical sketches were influenced by
Neo-confucian values of self-cultivation and the development of sincerity (cheng) as a primary virtue. For many
notable medical authorities, their affiliation with the ethical, religious and
contemplative traditions of China guided their medical careers. Among them, Fei
Boxiong advocated empathizing and connecting with the suffering of the patient,
as a manner to maintain conscientiousness, and stressed the ethical cultivation
at the heart of medicine. (Scheid, 106).

Hsu
clarifies that for qigong healers, wellbeing is transmitted and that methods
are trained in which a healer may become able to alter physiological states via
transmission or working upon the vital energy of the patient. Hsu’s informant,
Qiu di spoke of “nurturing the primordial qi through herbs, diet and
meditation.” (Hsu, 71) These ideas have been prevalent since antiquity, in vogue
primarily in Taoist religious contexts, including the adherence to alchemical
practices and philosophies in the pursuit of longevity and immortality. Aside
from clinical medicine, many noted medical authorities were concerned with
these realms of quasi-religious practice and inner alchemy (nei dan), including Li Shi Zhen, in
whose Qi Jing Ba Mai Kao (Exposition
on the Eight Extraordinary Vessels) one finds a conscious inclusion of
alchemical ideas and principles in discussing the core meridian systems of the
body. While the “medical body” of the Inner Cannon had us glimpse the
potentials of medicine in terms of preserving and extending life, further
evidence of alchemical thought can be gleaned even in Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing, an early systematic presentation of herbal
pharmacology. The concerns of
medicine and that of religion arbitrated notions of physiology and bodily
existence, such that the context for transforming suffering into wisdom took on
varied directions.